The Kurnool District Bar Associations Joint Action Committee (JAC) shot off a letter to Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy on Tuesday, highlighting an ongoing protest undertaken by them, and requesting an audience with the YSRCP chief.
"The Advocates Associations of Kurnool District have been on relay hunger strike for the last 56 days abstaining from courts and agitating in different ways and modes with the support of all employees, students, trade unions and peoples organisations, demanding he shifting of the High Court of AP, from Amaravati to Kurnool, in the Rayalaseema region," the JAC said in its letter to public representatives including MLAs and MPs from the district.
The Rayalaseema region comprises four districts – Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Chittoor. The region has several drought-prone areas and has rued neglect from successive state governments, for decades.
Asking the public representatives to support the cause, the JAC said that they wished to meet the Chief Minister and submit a detailed proposal to establish the High Court in Kurnool.
Arguing its case in a letter to Jagan Mohan Reddy, the JAC said, "Concentration of development in one place leads to imbalanced development of other places and regions in a state. We have got bitter experience of developing Hyderabad in a combined state and were left with empty hands and a starved state of Andhra Pradesh, after bifurcation."
It also pointed out that former CM Chandrababu Naidu had also committed a similar mistake by centralising power in Amaravati.
Similar protests are also ongoing in Visakhapatnam as a growing number of lawyers are demanding that the High Court should be established in north coastal Andhra Pradesh, another neglected region in the state.
The Visakhapatnam Bar Association (VBA), who have the support of lawyers from Srikakulam and Vizianagaram districts, held a general body meeting and passed a unanimous resolution on the issue to take it up with the state government and the Centre.
The lawyers are also seeking to meet Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to establish a separate National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) in Visakhapatnam.